With increased concern for environmental quality and safety for both occupational workers and the public, and the associated massive cleanup of the nation's government facilities, more personnel will be needed with qualifications in dealing with hazardous materials. Health physics is one part of this effort, requiring individuals to be trained in radiation exposure control and dosimetry. The number of individuals trained in health physics is not keeping pace with the demand for their services. Recent labor studies predict a shortage of health physicists during the next several decades. Failure to prevent this shortage will leave industrial nations at a disadvantage in a number of areas including nuclear power, radiological waste management, nuclear medicine, etc. One solution to this shortage is to expand existing training programs and to create new training programs. Another solution is to improve the effectiveness of existent training programs.
Training is presently done in one of two ways: with controlled radiation sources or in actual hazardous environments. As a consequence, training in health physics is expensive and inefficient. Furthermore, training can be hazardous for those involved and thus requires careful supervision. As the need for these qualified individuals increases and more people are involved with this type of training, unnecessary exposure and the danger of over-exposure during training increases.
A major part of health physics training is devoted to learning how to use radiation detection and monitoring instruments. This is accomplished by (1) using actual instruments and actual radiation sources in a classroom laboratory situation and/or (2) on-the-job training. In either case, training using actual radiation sources involves needless exposure to health physicist trainees. In addition, training using actual radioactive material increases the cost and difficultly associated with training, since the radioactive sources used in the training program require careful control and experienced health physics personnel to handle and use the radioactive sources.
Health physics instrument simulators are known. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,643,166, 3,613,259, 3,266,847 and U.S. Reissue Pat. No. Re. 27,078 disclose health physics instrument simulator systems and methods whereby radiation simulation is achieved using radio frequency attenuation of one or more signals. On the other hand, U.S. Pat. No. 2,900,740 discloses a system for radiation simulation using phosphor materials while the U.S. Pat. No. 4,500,295 discloses a simulated alpha particle detector operated by magnets.
Other U.S. patents teaching health physics instrument simulators include U.S. Pat. No. 4,917,611, which discloses transmitting an assumed radiation dose rate from a first instrument operated by an instructor to a second device simulating a radmeter, wherein an eight digit number is determined by the second device corresponding to dose rate. In particular, the two (2) most significant digits of the eight digit number correspond to meter range while the six (6) least significant digits correspond to a value indicating meter movement within the selected range. This patent also discloses improvements in simulation by permitting a wide range of dose rates to be displayed on a single simulated instrument. However, U.S. Pat. No. 4,917,611 discloses a system in which the student is "tethered" to an instructor with radio waves. Dose rate information is selected by the instructor and transmitted to stimulate a multi-range instrument held by the student.
Japanese Kokai No. 84-132381, on the other hand, discloses a health physics training apparatus wherein a room and a computer system are employed. In particular, a buried grid system is located below the training room floor and a combination transmitter/receiver held by the student is tracked using the grid. The computer determines the simulated dose to the student and transmits a warning signal to the student. The computer system captures data for later evaluation after the training session has been completed.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,582,491 discloses a catastrophic event training system permitting designation of a training area by grid coordinates, designating a single source, such as nuclear device or bomb, at a grid location within the training area, setting an exercise start time, calculation a plurality of contamination levels within the training area based on the detonation of the nuclear device, height above ground, etc., and displaying the calculated contamination level in response to entry of a grid location in the training area. Thus, U.S. Pat. No. 4,582,491 discloses a simulator most appropriate for training in areas of contamination from weapons, chemicals, etc. It uses a storage medium for an assumed field of contamination and a location input means such as a keyboard and a realtime clock so that the trainee can be updated on dose rate and total dose.
Health physics instrument simulator systems using a computer, such as a PC, to store information on radiation fields or, alternatively, to calculate these quantities in near real-time from arbitrary distributions of sources, which permit the student to interact with this information in a number of convenient ways, have not been produced.